Safeguard Defenders, an NGO with a long tradition of supporting human rights and freedoms in China, assures in its latest report that the Beijing regime operates a network of police stations abroad to persecute dissidents.
There would be 54 police stations in 21 countries on five continents. In Spain there would be nine: three in Barcelona, ??another three in Madrid, two in Valencia and one in Santiago de Compostela.
Apparently, these clandestine police stations offer consular services and other administrative procedures to Chinese citizens abroad. In any case, they are illegal because they violate international law and the territorial integrity of the country in which they are located.
Safeguard Defenders, which is based in Madrid, accuses China of using these police stations to force the “voluntary return” of citizens suspected of having committed a crime.
The excuse is the fight against cybercrime: scams, human trafficking, gambling and other crimes committed through the Internet.
Digital fraud is endemic in China. Many criminals operate from other countries, especially from these nine: Turkey, Burma, United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. The government prohibits Chinese citizens from living in them without very good cause.
Last month it passed a law against telecommunications fraud. It will come into force on December 1 and will allow the security services to go after suspected Chinese criminals wherever they are, including abroad.
President Xi Jinping’s administration acknowledges that between April 2021 and July this year it has “persuaded” 230,000 Chinese to return “voluntarily” to China to settle their accounts with justice.
Persuasion starts with a request to the interested party. In case he neglects it, he starts the pressure on his family in China, which he harasses with all kinds of strategies. If these relatives do not cooperate, that is, if they cannot get the suspect to return, they are considered “guilty by association” and can be jailed.
The Chinese government, according to the Safeguard Defenders report, uses the overseas “administrative services” of two cities, Fuzhou and Qingtian. The 54 police stations would operate under the control of just these two cities. In Barcelona, ??for example, two police stations are from Fuzhou and the other from Qingtian.
The police stations would be linked to Chinese associations abroad. They are the ones who offer their compatriots the administrative services they need, such as renewing their driver’s license or paying a tax in China.
Safeguard Defenders, however, suspects that these police stations are the cover for a vast transnational network to eliminate dissent abroad. His collaborators on the ground have collected many testimonies from people who have been forced to return simply because of their ideas in favor of democracy, human rights and civil liberties.
This repressive operation would be part of the United Front, a system of the Communist Party to attract prominent personalities, both inside and outside China.
This recruitment, again, is “voluntary”, although the consequences for those who do not accept are severe. They may be deprived of basic services such as housing, health and education.
The United Front is seeking supporters, especially among religious and ethnic minorities, as well as among the diaspora.
This same strategy explains the Caza del Zorro campaign, directed by the Ministry of Public Security to obtain the “collaboration” of presumed criminals and dissidents who have a great projection. The Ministry assures that it has hunted more than ten thousand.
China maintains extradition and police and judicial collaboration treaties with numerous countries, but this network of police stations would show that it prefers to use its own methods. Without a doubt, they are more expeditious.
Chinese living abroad are deprived of the projection of justice and security services of the countries in which they reside.
It is striking that most of the police stations on the Safeguard Defenders list are in democratic countries, especially European ones, where a large part of the diaspora critical of Xi Jinping resides.
